The 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics are entering their final stretch, and Saturday delivered exactly what a penultimate day should breathtaking highs, narrow misses, and the kind of emotional storytelling that makes the Games worth watching in the first place.
Team USA opened the day in the best possible way, with the mixed aerials team of Kaila Kuhn, Connor Curran, and Chris Lillis combining for a record-breaking gold medal performance. The victory pushed the United States to 11 gold medals in Italy the most the country has ever claimed in a single Winter Games. It’s a benchmark worth sitting with for a moment. Eleven golds. In one Winter Olympics. The Americans are having a historically good Games.
What followed, though, was a reminder that sports rarely stay tidy for long.
The curling heartbreak and what almost was
U.S. women’s curling came agonizingly close to making history Saturday, falling 10-7 to Canada in the bronze medal match. It would have been the program’s first-ever Olympic curling medal a milestone that has eluded American women’s curling through multiple Games. Instead, Canada reclaimed the podium for the first time since 2014, returning to a stage the program historically owns.
The match was back-and-forth throughout, and the Americans made them earn it. But close isn’t a medal, and the U.S. women’s curling team will have to carry that near-miss into the next four-year cycle as motivation.
Stolz falls just short, Manganello delivers the perfect ending
Jordan Stolz, the 21-year-old speedskating phenom, narrowly missed the podium in long-track’s most chaotic discipline the mass start finishing fourth in a race that lived up to its unpredictable reputation. A fourth-place finish at 21 in an Olympic mass start stings in the moment but reads differently on a career arc with years of runway ahead.
Mia Manganello told a different kind of story entirely. At 36, competing in what she announced as her final Olympic race, Manganello won a bronze medal in the mass start her first individual Olympic medal after a career that has included everything but. It’s the kind of finish that sports occasionally writes for athletes who keep showing up, and Saturday delivered it on cue. A 36-year-old speedskater, final race, first individual medal. If that doesn’t give you chills, check your pulse.
Eileen Gu returns to the halfpipe for her final event
The most complicated storyline of these Games takes another turn Saturday when Eileen Gu competes in the women’s freestyle skiing halfpipe final her third and final event of the Milan Cortina Olympics. Gu, American-born but competing for China where her mother was born, has been a lightning rod for debate throughout the Games. None of that changes what happens on the halfpipe, where the competition will be fierce.
Team USA’s Svea Irving and Kate Gray are both in the final, having placed eighth and 12th respectively in Thursday’s qualifying round. Irving granddaughter of celebrated American author John Irving placed fifth at the 2025 World Championships and brings genuine podium potential. Great Britain’s Zoe Atkin led qualifying with a 91.50 score and enters as the defending world and X Games champion. This final has the makings of a proper battle.
Malinin gets his redemption moment at the exhibition gala
Perhaps no athlete at these Games has carried a heavier emotional weight than Ilia Malinin. The 21-year-old figure skater, nicknamed the Quad God and undefeated in competition since November 2023, fell during his free skate and dropped to eighth place in men’s singles missing an individual medal entirely. He’s been open about not being mentally prepared for the weight of the Olympic moment, and the skating community has responded with enormous support.
Saturday gives Malinin something the competition couldn’t a chance to perform without pressure, during figure skating’s exhibition gala. He earned a gold medal in the team event, so he’s not leaving Milan empty-handed, but the gala represents an opportunity to close his first Olympics on his own terms, doing what he does better than almost anyone on the planet.
He’ll share the ice with women’s singles champion Alysa Liu the first American woman figure skater to medal in the Olympic individual event in 24 years and Amber Glenn, who delivered a triumphant free skate Thursday. It’s a star-studded send-off to a figure skating program that has given these Games some of its most memorable moments.
One day left in Milan Cortina. Based on Saturday, Sunday has a lot to live up to.
